


This ain't a scene

by Phrenotobe_Archive



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternian Christmas Songs, F/F, Mind Control, descriptions of urban decay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe_Archive/pseuds/Phrenotobe_Archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She catches Rose’s eye and gives her a myopic wink through busted-up milk-bottle lenses, cracked on one side but still mostly in the frame, her fangs sticking out and smudged with blue lip gloss. Rose gives her a thoughtful tilt of the head, reaches across to nip it out of her fingers, and slips a 50% off sticker from one of the Duran Duran christmas singles onto the dust jacket, slipping it back into place.</p><p>“Nice, Lalonde,” she says.<br/>“Thanks,”  she replies, with a thin little smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This ain't a scene

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buttmaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttmaster/gifts).



Rose and Vriska meet for the first time properly in a radio store, a grey hand on the other side of the most hipster of pressed recordings, running a thin line down the edge of the most oblique record with her fingernail to destroy somebody’s pristine audio experience. She catches Rose’s eye and gives her a myopic wink through busted-up milk-bottle lenses, cracked on one side but still mostly in the frame, her fangs sticking out and smudged with blue lip gloss. Rose gives her a thoughtful tilt of the head, reaches across to nip it out of her fingers, and slips a 50% off sticker from one of the Duran Duran christmas singles onto the dust jacket, slipping it back into place.

“Nice, Lalonde,” she says.  
“Thanks,” she replies, with a thin little smile. She doesn’t ask where the troll caught her name. 

Rose turns left as she exits the store, crunching through the frost on the street with her head down, a wide troll with coiled horns weaving around her at the last moment as she stubbornly refuses to move. Two rustbloods in big floppy hats and a hemoanonymous troll in dark goggles are holding a donation bucket and singing songs in Alternian a capella on the corner to the tune of Jingle Bells, their phrases altering with every verse. Before they’re out of earshot, they’ve stopped singing to scuffle with a passerby over the content of their festive carols, no doubt profane.

It’s going to be spring in a few months, and everybody is swaddled up against the cold. The incident is soon forgotten whilst buying almond milk at the store, blanking out the small talk of the cashier while paying for a bag of sour candy on impulse and leaving her change behind on just as wild a whim. There are ways to live dangerously around trolls without offering up your own neck, not that she can ever remember a time when she didn’t dance with both. 

Rose takes the stairs to her apartment on the fifth floor, the elevator out of order as always. Her girlfriend isn’t home, a note on the fridge as to her whereabouts. It’s a wet kind of frost, so gleefully taking her violin out into the fresh air to bother all and sundry with a haunting refrain is inadvisable. She gets a ghostly feeling of it underneath her fingers, pressure at her fingertips like strings.

Scribbling another note to place beneath the first, she takes her time changing her shoes before she leaves again, sealing the message with a neat kiss, a purple lipstick mark soaking into the paper. It’s still a ways before dinner, and there will be time for that lingering thought to be indulged. Just a walk around the block, stopping under the fire escape to admire the view where they’ve demolished the old neighborhood. It’s full of basement spaces that look like giant’s graves. A wonderful place to put into her book.  
Putting her gloves back on, Rose steps out into the grey day once more, a gloomy afternoon swiftly slipping into evening time.

She glances up at the sky, more concerned with the dark shadow that could be an oncoming storm, only to note that it’s the fault of one of the many letters drawn into the sky, bone-white and perpetually present. She checks her watch for the time of sunset, humming a thoughtful note. 

The cold air hits her again on the way out, a fresh burst that makes her teeth rattle under the fringes of her scarf. She thinks about turning left again, and going back the way she came, but her feet go right instead, taking her down towards the park. She lets them, crunching through the rotten leaves on the sidewalk, a vague feeling about her destination in the back of her mind. Through the art district, replete with opportunistic upselling of studio apartments that get broken into when left derelict six months out of every twelve by hot-blooded trolls and others who still need a place to live. Lots of people can’t afford anything any more. 

Latticework set into the sidewalk rattles with sub-sonic thuds that echo up through Rose’s shoes as she pauses to read a street sign, and she waits a moment overlong, trying to imagine the tune playing underneath. three-two-three over eight, rolling onto her toes as a guitar starts to layer down. She’s tried the troll music scene, coming home with ringing ears and a shivering spine, de-tuning her violin and running scales to grate against her own teeth. The feeling of her violin against her fingers becomes strong again, a longing, an impulse. She frowns.

 

Vriska slips out of the radio store and ducks into an alley, leaning against a wall to sift through what she’s picked up from the human. She’s cute, but strong-minded. There’s a few things that linger; grade averages (high) topics of interest (faintly amusing) and some kind of ongoing creative drive, a book with about a fifty-fifty chance of ever being complete. It’s a higher chance than most nerds she’s dug into.  
There’s also musicality, some kind of stringed instrument, made of wood and pulled as taught as the mind that manipulates it. Vriska has never felt the need to be that subtle, smashing through most people with the mental equivalent of a baseball bat to the hypothalamus, zeroing in on what she wanted and taking it. It’ll be fun to try and bring her around without that.  
Raising a hand to her forehead, she links in, frowning unknowingly with concentration. 

Rose pulls her phone out to check for a text. She slides over the interface to gaze absently at the number pad, an urge to tap out a code that is unfamiliar and yet on the tip of her tongue. She slips her phone back away. It’s dangerous to have something like that on show, just what was she thinking.

Vriska quietly cusses, navigating out of the alley and lowering her hand to jog toward the store on the corner, taking refuge in the freezer aisle, the cold bringing her some clarity and making her consider what just happened. What the fuck.  
She reaches in to touch the icy shelves, grabbing a handful of freezer scrud and clenching it tight. It sticks to her fingers, taking a while to melt, freely dripping to the floor.  
Rose is near the club on 186, a place that has drawn Vriska more than once, thick with every color, lit so every sign is hemoanonymous, and a feature which Vriska takes as an excuse to grind up on everyone and find out by feel. She throws the ice to the floor with an angry splat, turning on her heel and exiting the store, shadowing Rose’s steps across the city. 

Rose tucks her nose into her scarf, breathing in perfume. She gets the tail end of a bad mood, running as quick through and out of her head as a headache. She slows to a stop, and puts a hand to her forehead. It’s not long to go until she reaches the demolished neighborhood, and then she can pause, and perhaps explore if she’s feeling daring. She might bring back a souvenir. 

Vriska scuffs her shoes on the sidewalk, kicking through damp leaves and feeling the wet ooze through into her socks. She taps two fingers to her forehead, checking up. For a minute she thinks she’s lost track, before she remembers the place and manages to zero in. She starts to jog, leering at everybody who turns their head to look at the spectacle. They quickly turn away after that. It’s not so far away to get to where Rose is going, not if she takes a few steps to ensure she gets there beforehand. There’s a lattice-wire and anti-theft paint wall blocking off the place, and it’s probably going to be easier to scale than walking a mustardblood into a lamp post to watch the both of them flash confused sparks like a light show. 

She slows to a genial amble, windowshopping as the lamps begin to dimly glow to aid human eyes. She steps back from a brightly lit set of craft tools in a pawn shop and turns her head to eye the fence that stretches over the gap between two tall office blocks. 

Rose eyes the fence, slipping in through a loose panel left ajar conveniently at the end of the day.  
On the other side of it all, Vriska pulls herself up and over the fence, tearing her jeans on it and landing with a bump on the other side. She scrabbles to her feet, dusting her jacket off and loping toward Rose with a grin. 

Rose takes a few steps forward and stops, the lingering sense of anticipation and joy evaporating swiftly as she notes the silhouette advancing upon her, moving with arms akimbo like a scarecrow. She feels the faint imprint of her violin strings on her fingertips again, and rubs against the callous, wishing it were real. There are no lights here, the street lamps are busted down to inglorious stumps with frayed wires half-hidden in clumps out of the trunk, with rusting innards and a little ways inroad, basements lurk as slightly-darker-than-the-rest pits that threaten ankle-deep water, broken stairs and a high chance of lurking tetanus. 

“Hey Lalonde,” the troll greets her again, and there’s no doubt here that what has happened is a mind game.  
“Good evening,” Rose says curtly, stuffing her hand into a pocket for her keys.  
“I’m not here to kill you, god,” Vriska flat out states, mirroring Rose’s stance with two fingers tucked into the pocket of her jeans. She tosses her head like a maybelline advert.  
“So like, I remembered you,” Vriska continues, “Thought we should meet up.”  
Rose’s eyebrows pinch together, the lower half of her face a careful stony blank.  
“We met in a music store once and you’re calling this fate?” 

Vriska lifts her arm, rubbing at her nose and adjusting the fit of her glasses. they flash in the half-light, some kind of refraction from goodness-knows-where, and she grabs a chunk of her hair to fling it back over her shoulder.  
“You know my name, right?”  
Rose’s mouth twists.  
“Vriska,” she murmurs, “A lousy pirate, but I have heard of you.”  
The troll’s long fangs show bright for moments as she pulls back her lips for a grin full of sharp edges.  
“Yeah! Yeah, see, we know each other. I just had to get you alone.”  
Rose taps the toe of her shoe on the ground, weighing the odds.  
“I have a girlfriend, you know,” she replies, hoping it carries weight.  
Vriska shrugs.  
“You seemed like you knew how to have fun,” she says, “Besides, you remember the game too.”  
“This isn’t going to alter my stance on the matter,” Rose says, “I don’t remember playing games with trolls. I don’t remember why I’m here, and I don’t remember you. If you do this again, I’m going to call the police.”  
Vriska throws out a hand, asking her to pause.  
“Hey,” she says, “Hey come on, you wouldn’t remember me, I died before we could hang out.”  
“No,” Rose says, with an arrogant lift of the chin, “I’m going home. Don’t you dare follow me.”

Vriska steps forward, one arm lifting part way to her head before she realizes what she’s doing and lets it sag to waist height.  
“Okay,” she says, “So maybe I just figured you were fun, but come on. You dream about the green sun, right?”  
Rose takes a step back, and then another.  
“No,” she says, resting her weight back on two feet, “I haven’t.”  
Vriska just laughs, closing the gap.  
“You did,” she says, sing-song and mocking, “You did, and you do.”  
Rose’s hand tips into her pocket to find something - pepper spray, a keyring, even a perfume squirter - as she takes another step back, teetering on the edge of the basement chasm behind her, closer than she thought. Her arm snaps out wide and straight to balance, and Vriska grabs for it and tugs forward.  
“You remember what falling felt like, though, huh?”  
Rose stays very still in Vriska’s grasp, unwilling to shift her weight.  
“Perhaps.” she says, warily.  
“Can you fly, Lalonde?” Vriska asks cheerfully, tilting Rose slightly backwards onto her heels with an easy motion of her arm to hold her just a little further over the gap.  
Rose scrabbles with her free arm, grasping at the collar of Vriska’s shirt, twisting and pulling it with strong fingers digging tight into the overwashed cotton blend. The threads wheeze and something pops; her dark-polished fingernails scrape over the troll’s collarbone as she pulls _back_.  
“Absolutely not,” she replies smartly, once she’s assured of her grip.  
Vriska laughs, reeling her back in to stand upright.  
“Right answer. So have you ever wondered why Trolls and Humans live all crushed up together? Let’s talk about it.”


End file.
